Banking supervision and regulation: 2nd report of session 2008-09, Vol. 2: Evidence

2007 and 2008 saw the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s. Banks looking for better yields from plentiful, cheap money made much more use of complex financial instruments, without fully understanding the risks to which they were exposing themselves and the financial system. Defaults on subprime mortgages underlying some of the instruments shattered confidence and financial markets seized up. The framework of regulation and supervision in Britain failed to avoid or mitigate the crisis. The tripartite authorities in the United Kingdom - Bank of England, Financial Services Authority (FSA) and HM Treasury - failed to maintain financial stability and were found wanting, in part because the roles of the three parties were not well enough defined and it was not clear who was in charge. Too little attention was paid to macro-prudential supervision (oversight of the aggregate impact on financial stability of individual banks’ actions). Only the Bank of England and the